MUSIC
FRIDAY - SUNDAY, AUGUST 23 - 25, 2019
7:00 PM FRIDAY
3:00 PM SATURDAY & SUNDAY

Charlie Parker Jazz Festival
FRIDAY & SATURDAY: Marcus Garvey Park
18 Mount Morris Park West, Harlem, Manhattan
SUNDAY: Tompkins Square Park
500 East 9th Street, East Village, Manhattan

Free
https://cityparksfoundation.org/calendar/category/charlie-parker-jazz-festival/

Is it me, or does the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival seem boring this year? Is it that a generation has died out, and the programmers for whatever reason can't access the cream of the succeeding generations? Or does the festival lose its edge as jazz moves on and we get further and further from the time of Charlie Parker and the jazz community he worked in? All that aside, no series of shows featuring Maceo Parker (no relation to Charlie), Ravi Coltrane, and George Coleman is going to be worthless. (There are satellite events throughout Harlem starting on WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21.)

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Uptown, Harlem Shake or Barawine, depending on whether your mood inclines you to good burgers or good wine. Downtown, maybe Odessa before the show, strictly for old times' sake (nobody's going to claim the food is very good -- but the price remains right, and you can marvel that the floor of the bathroom is no longer littered with used needles). Afterward, cocktails through the phone booth on the side of Crif Dogs in Please Don't Tell.